An organization's assets are often defined by reference to tangible assets, such as capital, equipment, physical structures, and materials owned by the company. Assets, however, may also include intangibles, such as patents, copyrights, trademarks, good will, and trade secrets. In fact, collective knowledge that the organization holds may be an asset as well.
Knowledge can be defined in many different ways. For example, knowledge may be defined as information organized for problem solving or action. Knowledge may also be defined as the interaction between and the experiences held by people. Or, knowledge may be defined as simply a justified true belief held by someone. In other words, knowledge may mean different things to different people. Most often though, any type of knowledge, regardless how it is defined, can have value to someone. In the business community, for example, knowledge in a particular area or discipline that is held by a company has value to itself, but also to others, such as customers or competitors. This knowledge can, hence forth, be considered an asset, or, specifically referred to as a knowledge asset. Knowledge assets refer to any active, organized and reasoned content. Specifically, the content of a knowledge asset can be data, information or meaning. The structure of the knowledge asset can be the relationships among components of the content or how the content is organized. The reasoning of the knowledge asset can be a process that uses the structure to access the content in order to perform cognitive tasks like decision making, problem solving, or interpretation. Such knowledge assets often manifest themselves in a company by the know-how of employees who are experts in particular areas, product development groups experienced in developing products or services, and electronic information accumulated through research, development, production and marketing. A detailed recitation of knowledge assets is provided in the publication Knowledge Assets: A Professional's Guide to Valuation and Financial Management, by Mark Clare and Arthur DeTore, Harcourt Professional Publishing, New York, 2000, the complete text of which is hereby expressly incorporated into the specification by reference.
Because knowledge in a particular discipline may be large and disorganized, it may not be readily accessible to users either inside or outside the organization. Access to this knowledge, however, can be an important factor in determining value. Knowledge that is not accessible may have little practical value regardless of its content. For such knowledge to have value, it should be organized and accessible.
For purposes of the discussion herein, an area of knowledge will be referred to as a domain. Specifically, a domain refers to a particular body of knowledge, and a set of methods for creating, sharing and using that body of knowledge to achieve a given purpose. Academic fields of study (e.g., mathematics or fine arts), professions (e.g., law or medicine), departments within a business (e.g., accounting or human resources) and even specific areas of expertise (e.g., the ability to troubleshoot complex equipment on an assembly line) are all examples of domains. Structured domains, like law and medicine, are very organized, formally managed, and mature. They have highly articulated bodies of knowledge, and well-recognized and established methods for creating, accessing, and using that knowledge. Some domains, however, are more structured than others. Within business, for example, design engineering is a more structured domain than general management problem solving, and financial accounting is a more structured domain than coaching and developing employees.
Unstructured domains tend to be less clearly defined than their more structured counterparts. This is because, typically, unstructured domains cut across formal organizational lines, departmental boundaries, functional areas, or product families. General management, information technology management and, now, knowledge management, have all been concerned with developing methods and devices for structuring these domains in the hopes of more effectively utilizing the resources they contain and, thus, creating additional value for the organization. Today, significant investments are being made in document management, customer information systems, business intelligence processes, intranets, enterprise-wide information portals, managing intellectual capital and doing business on the internet, all of which are, to some extent, domain structuring tasks.
Entrepreneurs, management consultants, technology product vendors and others have strived to develop methodologies and offerings for partially structuring particular domains. Currently, however, there is no developed general purpose domain structuring methodology. For example, software applications and methodologies are readily available for structuring the domain of competitor information. Although their solutions can be very comprehensive for competitor information, they do not readily extend to, and are not useful for structuring other domains. On the other hand, many tools and methods exist for structuring “web content” for use both inside the organization (e.g., intranets) and outside the organization (e.g., web sites or e-business sites). Web content methodologies can be general enough to be applied to several domains. However, at best, they only partially structure domains. This is because information and knowledge sources of most domains go far beyond what can be used as web content.
The method of the present invention is useful because it can be used for structuring any domain to the appropriate degree. For purposes of this discussion, appropriate degree refers to the extent that structuring the domain is cost beneficial or otherwise value creating. This method is further useful because it acknowledges the fact that in many cases it is not possible to know in advance how much structure a domain requires to be value creating. This method, therefore, uses a staged evolutionary approach that determines how the domain structuring process creates value at each step and uses that information to guide the introduction of additional processes, technologies, and practices (e.g., other structuring agents) into the domain. Too much structuring of a domain might impede its function and might represent an over investment in technology and organizational “improvement.” Too little structuring, however, might indicate that key resources are being under leveraged. The method as described herein encourages a form of self-organization in the domain guided by selecting those structuring agents that create the most value from the domain.
The method disclosed herein is further useful in that it can be used to define common models, techniques, technology toolkits and rules within the domain. This can translate into lowered costs and risks associated with managing the many diverse domain structuring activities which many organizations may face.
Accordingly, an illustrative embodiment of this method provides the steps of developing an initial domain model from knowledge in an unstructured domain, determining whether there is value in further developing the initial domain model to include a knowledge map, developing and implementing the knowledge map if such value is determined, determining whether there is value in further developing the knowledge to include a knowledge clearinghouse, and developing and implementing the knowledge clearinghouse if such value is determined. This embodiment may further comprise the steps of determining whether there is value in further developing the knowledge to include a knowledge network, and developing and implementing the knowledge network if such value is determined.
It is contemplated that the illustrative embodiment may include the following steps while developing the initial domain model: defining organizational and content scopes relevant to the domain, identifying entities and processes subject to benefit from structuring of the knowledge, and conducting a cost/benefit analysis of the initial domain model based on the organizational and content scopes and identified benefitted entities and processes. The content scope may comprise explicit and implicit content. It is further contemplated that determining whether there is value in further developing the initial domain model into the knowledge map may include determining costs and specifications of the knowledge map, determining what value is created by developing the knowledge map, and evaluating what logistics and risks that exist by maintaining the knowledge map.
It is contemplated that the illustrative embodiment may include the following while developing and implementing the knowledge map: plotting an organizational structure of the content scope from the initial domain model, developing the content scope into the knowledge map pursuant to the organizational scope, providing access to the knowledge map, and evaluating and refining the knowledge map.
It is contemplated that determining whether there is value in further developing the knowledge to include the knowledge clearinghouse may include determining costs and specifications of the knowledge clearinghouse, determining what value is created by developing the knowledge clearinghouse, and evaluating logistics and risks of maintaining the knowledge clearinghouse. Developing and implementing the knowledge clearinghouse may further comprise the steps of collecting information about the explicit content within the knowledge map, organizing the information in a manner relevant to the domain, providing access to the knowledge clearinghouse, and evaluating and refining the knowledge clearinghouse.
It is contemplated that determining whether there is value in further developing the knowledge to include the knowledge network may include determining costs and specifications of the knowledge network, determining what value is created by developing the knowledge network, and evaluating logistics and risks of maintaining the knowledge network. Developing and implementing the knowledge network may further comprise developing the implicit content of the knowledge map.
Another illustrative embodiment of a method of managing knowledge to impart value may comprise the steps of: developing an initial domain model from knowledge in an unstructured domain, developing and implementing a knowledge map, and developing and implementing a knowledge clearinghouse. The method may also comprise developing and implementing a knowledge network.
Another illustrative embodiment of a method of managing knowledge to impart value may comprise the steps of: developing an initial domain model by identifying knowledge in the form of implicit and explicit knowledge, developing the implicit and explicit knowledge into a knowledge map and implementing same, and developing a knowledge clearinghouse that provides access to the explicit knowledge coincident with the knowledge map. The method may also comprise developing a knowledge network that provides a mechanism to mediate sharing of the implicit knowledge, and evaluating the method between each developing step to determine whether proceeding to a subsequent developing step imparts value to the knowledge and is, therefore, justified. The method may also comprise developing the initial domain model further by developing organizational, content and process scopes of the knowledge.
Additional advantages and novel features of the invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon consideration of the following descriptions.
Corresponding reference characters indicate corresponding parts throughout the several views. The exemplification set out herein illustrates an embodiment of the method, and such exemplification is not to be construed as limiting the scope of the invention in any manner.